{"title":"Monetary Policy Transmission Over the Leverage Cycle: Evidence for the Euro Area","authors":"Gerhard Rünstler, Leonie Bräuer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3627030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3627030","url":null,"abstract":"We study state dependence in the impact of monetary policy shocks over the leverage cycle for a panel of 10 euro area countries. We use a Bayesian Threshold Panel SVAR with regime classifications based on credit and house prices cycles. We find that monetary policy shocks trigger a smaller response of GDP, but a larger response of inflation during low states of the cycle. The shift in the inflation-output trade-off may result from higher macro-economic uncertainty in low leverage states. For an alternative regime classification based on turning points we find larger effects on GDP during contractions.","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116839782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Much Does Aggregate Demand Travel Across the Atlantic?","authors":"Ine Van Robays, Livio Stracca","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3636064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3636064","url":null,"abstract":"We identify the spill-over of demand shocks between the world's two largest advanced economies; the US and the euro area. We estimate a Bayesian VAR with sign restrictions, using standard restrictions for the domestic impact of the shock but a novel approach to identify the geographic location of the shocks and rule out common shocks. For the latter, we use the relative performance of small open economies that are neighbors of the US and the euro area, respectively Canada and Sweden, in addition to restricting the relative effects on the US, the euro area and the rest of the world. We find that demand spill-overs of US and euro area demand shocks become smaller on average when imposing relative restrictions, while they become larger in periods which are well-known to be specific to the US (global financial crisis) or the euro area (euro area sovereign debt crisis). Our results are confirmed by running a ‘placebo test’ where we replace the euro area with a small euro area economy, which should not have an independent effect on the US economy due to its small size.","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"395 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133546603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monetary Policy and Intangible Investment","authors":"Robin Döttling, Lev Ratnovski","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3612304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3612304","url":null,"abstract":"We contrast how monetary policy affects intangible relative to tangible investment. We document that the stock prices of firms with more intangible assets react less to monetary policy shocks, as identified from Fed Funds futures movements around FOMC announcements. Consistent with the stock price results, instrumental variable local projections confirm that the total investment in firms with more intangible assets responds less to monetary policy, and that intangible investment responds less to monetary policy compared to tangible investment. We identify two mechanisms behind these results. First, firms with intangible assets use less collateral, and therefore respond less to the credit channel of monetary policy. Second, intangible assets have higher depreciation rates, so interest rate changes affect their user cost of capital relatively less.","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114182840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Effects of State-Dependent Forward Guidance, Large-Scale Asset Purchases and Fiscal Stimulus in a Low-Interest-Rate Environment","authors":"G. Coenen, Carlos Montes-Galdón, F. Smets","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3522191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3522191","url":null,"abstract":"We study the incidence and severity of lower-bound episodes and the efficacy of three types of state-dependent policies—forward guidance about the future path of interest rates, large-scale asset purchases and spending-based fiscal stimulus—in ameliorating the adverse consequences stemming from the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates. In particular, we focus on the euro area economy and examine, using the ECB’s New Area-Wide Model, the consequences of the lower bound both for the near-term economic outlook, characterised by persistently low nominal interest rates and inflation, and in a lasting low-real-interest-rate world. Our findings suggest that, if unaddressed, the lower bound can have very substantial costs in terms of worsened macroeconomic performance. Forward guidance, if fully credible, is most powerful and can largely undo the distortionary effects due to the lower bound. A combination of imperfectly credible forward guidance, asset purchases and fiscal stimulus is almost equally effective, in particular when asset purchases enhance the credibility of the forward guidance policy via a signalling effect. JEL Classification: E31, E32, E37, E52, E62","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123342484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Estimating the Optimal Inflation Target from Trends in Relative Prices","authors":"Klaus Adam, H. Weber","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3530927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3530927","url":null,"abstract":"We derive closed-form expressions for the optimal inflation target under Calvo and menu-cost frictions in a model featuring a product life cycle and multiple sources of heterogeneity across goods. We show that both frictions deliver the same optimal target and how it can be estimated from observed trends in relative prices. Using micro price data underlying the CPI in the United Kingdom, we document that relative prices fall over the product lifetime in most expenditure items. This causes the optimal inflation target to be positive, with our baseline estimate for the United Kingdom being equal to 2.6 percent in 2016. The optimal target has steadily increased over the prior two decades due to an acceleration in the rates of relative price decline over time. (JEL C51, D15, E31, L11)","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125983067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Virginia Di Nino, Irma Alonso Álvarez, F. Venditti
{"title":"Strategic Interactions and Price Dynamics in the Global Oil Market","authors":"Virginia Di Nino, Irma Alonso Álvarez, F. Venditti","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3547928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3547928","url":null,"abstract":"In a simplified theoretical framework we model the strategic interactions between OPEC and non-OPEC producers and the implications for the global oil market. Depending on market conditions, OPEC may find it optimal to act either as a monopolist on the residual demand curve, to move supply in-tandem with non-OPEC, or to offset changes in non-OPEC supply. We evaluate the implications of the model through a Structural Vector Auto Regression (VAR) that separates non-OPEC and OPEC production and allows OPEC to respond to supply increases in non-OPEC countries. This is done by either increasing production (Market Share Targeting) or by reducing it (Price Targeting). We find that Price Targeting shocks absorb half of the fluctuations in oil prices, which have left unexplained by a simpler model (where strategic interactions are not taken into account). Price Targeting shocks, ignored by previous studies, explain around 10 percent of oil price fluctuations and are particularly relevant in the commodity price boom of the 2000s. We confirm that the fall in oil prices at the end of 2014 was triggered by an attempt of OPEC to re-gain market shares. We also find the OPEC elasticity of supply three times as high as that of non-OPEC producers. JEL Classification: Q41, Q43","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130339246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rita Cappariello, Sebastian Franco-Bedoya, Vanessa Gunnella, G. Ottaviano
{"title":"Rising Protectionism and Global Value Chains: Quantifying the General Equilibrium Effects","authors":"Rita Cappariello, Sebastian Franco-Bedoya, Vanessa Gunnella, G. Ottaviano","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3612910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3612910","url":null,"abstract":"Quantifying the effects of trade policy in the age of 'global value chains' (GVCs) requires an enhanced analytical framework that takes the observed international input-output relations in due account. However, existing quantitative general equilibrium models generally assume that industry-level bilateral final and intermediate trade shares are identical, and that the allocation of imported inputs across sectors is the same as the allocation of domestic inputs. This amounts to applying two proportionality assumptions, one at the border to split final goods and inputs, and another behind the border to allocate inputs across industries. In practice, neither assumption holds in available input-output data sets. To overcome this limitation of existing models, we consider a richer input-output structure across countries and sectors that we can match with the actual structure reported in input-output tables. This allows us to investigate the relation between the effects of changes in trade policies and GVCs. When we apply the enhanced quantitative general equilibrium model to the assessment of the effects of Brexit, we find trade and welfare losses that are substantially larger than those obtained by previous models. This is due to the close integration of UK-EU production networks and implies that denser GVCs amplify the adverse effects of protectionist trade policies.","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129145469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tiered CBDC and the Financial System","authors":"U. Bindseil","doi":"10.2866/134524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2866/134524","url":null,"abstract":"IT progress and its application to the financial industry have inspired central banks and academics to analyse the merits of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) accessible to the broad public. This paper first reviews the advantages and risks of such CBDC. It then discusses two prominent arguments against CBDC, namely (i) risk of structural disintermediation of banks and centralization of the credit allocation process within the central bank and (ii) risk of facilitation systemic runs on banks in crisis situations. Two-tier remuneration of CBDC is proposed as solution to both issues, and a comparison is provided with a simple cap solution and the solution of Kumhof and Noone (2018). Finally, the paper compares the financial account implications of CBDC with the ones of crypto assets, Stablecoins, and narrow bank digital money, in a domestic and international context.","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"439 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125756446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Firms’ Expectations on the Availability of Credit Since the Financial Crisis","authors":"Annalisa Ferrando, I. Ganoulis, Carsten Preuss","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3515395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3515395","url":null,"abstract":"Using a large set of firm-level survey data from the euro area since 2009, we analyse how firms use their information to form expectations on the availability of bank finance. Our results suggest that firms update what otherwise look like adaptive expectations on the basis of the latest information in their information set. As in the previous literature, the hypothesis that expectations fulfil the (orthogonality) conditions of the rational expectations hypothesis is rejected by the data. We find evidence that this is not only due to information imperfections but also to some type of misspecification of the expectations’ model that firms are using. In addition, we find some evidence that companies that have not used bank finance recently tend to do worse at forecasting its availability next period. To test how policy announcements may affect expectations, we concentrate on the possible effects of the ECB policy announcements of summer 2012, which included among other things the announcement of the European Central Bank’s Outright Monetary Transactions Program (OMT). Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find evidence of forward-looking expectations. In particular, shortly after the OMT announcement the forecast of “informed” firms were more upbeat compared to the control group of firms. This moreover was true in both vulnerable and non-vulnerable countries, suggesting that it was the relevance of the information about the future of the banking system that most mattered for expectations at the time, more than the immediate impact of the announced policy measures. JEL Classification: C83, D22, D84","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128396994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inflation Trends in Asia: Implications for Central Banks","authors":"Juan A. Garcia, Aubrey Poon","doi":"10.1093/oep/gpab050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oep/gpab050","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article shows that trend inflation estimation offers crucial insights for the analysis of inflation dynamics and long-term inflation expectations. Focusing on the 12 largest Asian economies, a sample comprising both advanced and emerging economies and different monetary policy regimes, we show that trend inflation analysis can help explain the different impact of the disinflationary shocks across countries. Among countries with inflation below target in recent years, in those with trend inflation low but constant (Australia, New Zealand) low inflation may be lasting, but temporary, while those in which trend inflation has declined (South Korea, Thailand) risk low inflation to become entrenched and a de-anchoring of expectations. Countries like India, Philippines, and Indonesia instead experienced a moderation in inflation and lower trend inflation, while others (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong SAR, Malaysia) were impacted very mildly. That diverse international evidence offers important insights for central banks worldwide.","PeriodicalId":269524,"journal":{"name":"ECB: Working Paper Series (Topic)","volume":"177 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134477561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}